A Sid and Stinky Adventure
by Inudaughter Returns
Summary: Sid and Stinky want to earn some cash. But when they meet Rex Smythe-Higgins III and agree to help him test his latest toy, will they have more adventure than they bargained for?
1. Chapter 1

It was a tranquil, sunny day. And one of the curiosities of a sunny, summer day is the garage sale. One of the neighbors several houses down from Gerald's had propped their garage door open. Furniture with price tags was stacked within it. Outside of the garage, plentiful rows of cardboard boxes paralleled the sidewalk, with strips of vibrant, green grass showing in between. Phoebe Heyerdahl blinked. Then with a loud, "hm," she bent down to rustle through the contents of the box to find an old magnifying glass and a chemistry beaker. She squinted through them both, one at a time, so that her face looked funny through the glass.

Other kids were there, too. Lila and Sheena were sorting through some books. Iggy and Toothless Joe were paying for some old, used toys- a toy train and an airplane. Helga was present, yet she merely watched Arnold and Gerald across the distance as she waited for Phoebe to finish up her shopping. Arnold dove fervently into one of the boxes, while Gerald, examined another.

"Find anything good?" Arnold asked once he had finished his own exploration of his box. But Gerald shook his head in disappointment.

"Nah! Only this baseball card for the worst player ever!" Gerald returned the card to the box after momentarily lifting it up for Arnold to view. "How about you?" he asked his friend after shedding his grimace. "Any luck?"

"Nah," Arnold said, a small, slightly off-center frown on his lips. "I don't see anything good. Oh! Wait! Take that back!"

"What?" Gerald wondered out loud. Arnold dashed forward three steps. He had spotted something. Arnold dug into yet another one of the many cardboard boxes. Then he hefted something up high into the air.

"Look!" Arnold stated while holding up his find. "I have a great idea for these!" Arnold scooped a knot of ropes and pulleys into his arms, then walked up to the house's owner to pay some silver change for it.

Gerald strode alongside his best friend, although he did not know what Arnold was up to. But he watched patiently as Arnold made for a tree in his backyard. His grandpa, Phil, was in backyard, reading a paper while seated on a plastic vinyl and aluminum folding stadium chair.

"Hey, Grandpa!" Arnold smiled, a bit of runaway excitement twerking his grin sideways with a mischievous and rapidly repressed switch. "Can I borrow one of the old tires in the garage?"

"Sure you can!" his Grandfather said without looking up from his newspaper. "But if you're going to hang it up in that tree, mind the bees!"

Arnold's smile remained entrenched as he and Gerald used the ropes and pulleys he had bought to make a neat tire swing in his backyard. Then Arnold and Gerald hopped on. Then they heard a familiar, mocking voice.

"Ha! You call that a tire swing!" Helga mocked, feet planted firmly in the dust as she glared into Arnold's backyard from the sidewalk of the adjoining street. Phoebe lingered uncertainly behind her taller, pink-clothed friend.

"It's kinda okay," Arnold observed weakly. But Helga stomped up to the tire swing like she owned it.

"Let us be the judge of that! Me and Phoebe will test it out!"

"Ooooh," Phoebe quivered. "I don't like tire swings!"

"That's okay, Phoebe!" Helga said with surprising, turn-around kindness. "We'll push you nice and slow!"

"Well... okay. If you promise," Phoebe stated. With all the bravery she could muster, Phoebe climbed up onto the tire swing with Helga and Arnold's help. They both swung the tire swing as minimally as possible.

"Wheee!" Phoebe giggled even if she was barely moving at all. Then she slid down. Arnold and Gerald both returned to their swing.

"Not so fast!" Helga said abruptly. She grasped the ropes and pulled herself up to the top of the tire swing so that she stood on the top of it. From there, she could grasp one of the ropes and shift her weight to coax it faster.

"Woah!" Arnold grit his teeth as the tire lurched uncomfortably fast. Helga let the tire swing come to a stop. Then, dizzy herself, she stumbled down for her perch to wander around in a whirly-eyed, disoriented circle. Then she slumped down to sit on the grass.

"Helga!" Arnold admonished. "Can you not do that? At least… not so much?"

"Well… some like it hot. Some like it cold, I guess," was Helga's way of saying yes. Arnold and Gerald continued swinging on their own. Then they heard a new voice. It was Sheena.

"Oh, wow. A real tire swing!" the girl mumbled. "Can we try?" By "we" she meant herself and Lila, even though their arms with loaded down with dog-eared, used children's books.

"Sure!" Arnold hopped down from the tire swing. Sheena and Lila climbed up. Phoebe returned to the tire swing for a second ride, as well. Arnold rocked the tire back and forth gently while Helga glowered at them. A touch of insecurity and jealousy ate at her. Gerald stood off to the side, an expression of thought and patience wrinkling his brow.

Across the board fence which divided Arnold's green, grassy backyard under the underpass and the sidewalk to the street less frequented by traffic than Vine Street, Sid and Stinky wandered purposefully down the sidewalk. They, too, had ambition to visit the garage sale. They paused to stare at Arnold and the crowd of friends gathered in his backyard.

"Hello, Arnold!" Stinky waved across the yards of concrete and grass which separated them.

"Yeah. Hey Arnold!" Sid waved, too.

"Hey, guys!" Arnold increased the volume of his voice. He projected it, yet one might not call it yelling. It was just enough to carry across the space, and splashed as cool as water from a sprinkler might with its dull roar. But being all the way across the yard, Stinky and Sid were far away enough that they might to one another in low voices without being overheard by their friends and fellow classmates. Or perhaps.. Rivals?

"Just look at that!" Sid observed with mild irritation. "I see Arnold is harem-building. Man, I wish I had that guy's problems."

"Yeah. Four girls? Well, three on account of Phoebe is Gerald's girl."

"Yeah. You think they'll get tired of his cool new tire swing?"

"Nah," Stinky muttered. "Arnold sure is gonna be stiff competition for dates when we turn teenagers on account his Grandpa lets him drive the car already."

"Shoot!" Stinky Peterson noted mildly, but without especial anger. "Oh well, let's all stop jawin' and get goin' to what we were doin'!"

"Yeah!" Sid glanced at his friend in perfect agreement.

The two boys made their sidewalk out of sight. As they did so, an ignorant, innocent, vacant-minded Arnold wandered away from the tire swing with four girls dangling off it to stand idly by his Grandpa. Phil folded the newspaper and chuckled. "I told ya to mind the bees, didn't I?" Grandpa cackled. He gave Arnold's elbow a nudge but the wide-eyed boy was as empty of comprehension as his hair was of moose.

Notwithstanding Arnold's continued ignorance of the finer details of flirtation, Stinky and Sid had their own goal. To reach the yard and garage sale everyone else had been to. They arrived, and despite the sale having been picked over by friends and being attended by adult pickers whom were difficult to navigate around, they took their own turns looking into a chipped, battered, used toy box. Sid held up an old teddy bear from the box.

"Look!" Sid said before noticing that the bear had one eye. Stinky squinted at it.

"No. I don't reckon I like that one," was Stinky's comment. "But this here is sure one keen slinky! You want this?" the boy said beginning to play with the toy.

"Nah. You keep it, Stinky." said Sid. "I'm gonna keep looking."

Sid discovered a sandglass. He turned it up and down to watch it pour a few times. Then he found some old telephone cords and got tangled in them. He looked through all the old baseball cards with Stinky, but they shook their heads at every one. They also shifted through lots of used Halloween and Christmas decorations. Yet, they did find a few things in the mess that they chose to carry with them. Stinky lined them up on the ground.

"So," the large-nosed boy said as he pointed to each one in turn. "We've got a glow in the dark unicorn statue, a puzzle, and a big 'ol bunch of frog plushies.

"Ribbit!" Sidney peeked out from beneath Sid's hat to approve. The frog companion disappeared beneath Sid's hat again.

"Look!" Sid interjected as he spotted something. "A caped superhero made entirely out of seashells glued together!" He added the peculiar model to their loot pile.

"Well, I reckon we've looked just about everywhere!" Stinky declared with much certainty. But Sid pointed ahead.

"Wait! We haven't checked the garage itself yet!"

"Ah. That's just furniture in there!" But Sid and his patent boots had already gone ahead. He picked up a funny mobile, then struck it with his finger so that it's adornments swayed back and forth with a jiggle.

Sid set the mobile down, then walked further into the garage. There, in the back corner was a small side table. Sid whipped the dust cloth off it to see it better.

"Boy, howdy!" Sid declared as he clutched his green hatted head. "A sport's car theme with a real sport's car model lamp! How cool is this! I wish I had it!" Sid fingered the lamp car's headlight with his fingertip.

"Only thirty-five dollars," the garage's owner said with his hands deep in his pockets as he watched Sid.

"How about three dollars and forty-five cents?" asked Sid. The answer was an obvious no.

"Ah, man!" Sid lamented as they left the garage sale with one plushie, a puzzle, and a superhero statue made entirely out of glued shells in their possession. "If only we had a way of making money somehow. Then we could buy more cool stuff whenever we wanted."

"Hm," Stinky Peterson scratched his head. "Well we can try the old traditions. Like a lemonade stand, or somethin'. Only nobody's ever taken to my fish lemon juice."

"Mow grass?" Sid asked.

"There ain't much grass to mow!" Stinky objected. The two boys looked around them. It was true. They were in a dust-deviled desert of pavement and asphalt.

"Well, how about we go to my home and ponder our dilemma awhile?"

"Sure thing," Sid agreed mildly.

They two boys hung out in Stinky Peterson's attic bedroom. It was true that Stinky's room looked more like a cabin than someplace in the city, but that might have been part of its' charm. Both boys studied an empty scrap of paper. Stinky kept a pen poised, yet he had nothing to add to blank page so he simply stared. That is, until someone knocked on Stinky's bedroom door.

"Stinky?" the boy's father spoke with his soft drawl. "Your Aunt Stinkel is here with your cousins, Stinko and Mel."

"Aw, Alright," Stinky Peterson said getting up from where he had sat. "I'll be down in just a second, Pa. Does that mean my friend has to go home now?"

"No. Your friend can stay around, Stinky!" His Pa said amicably. "The more company the better, for socializin'."

"Good," Stinky declared with delight. "Ya wanna stay awhile and meet my cousins? Well, two of 'em anyway."

"Sure, Stinky. I'd love to!" was Sid's answer. They went to sit on Stinky's comfortable front porch in the rockers. Stinky's relatives soon arrived to stand on the front porch with them.

"Oh, Stinky!" his aunt greeted him. "Good to see you. I have to take Stinko to the dentist. So could you stay here and watch Mel for a while?" The freckled, gangly, child relative waved and giggled. Then she hopped up onto a vacant rocking chair.

"Sure thing!" Stinky stated mildly. "Ma'am." Stinky Peterson went back to his rocking. His tender-aged cousin did the same thing before leaping down onto the porch to make a doll fly and crawl along the wooden posts. Then, just like that, his aunt returned.

"Here you go, Stinky! You did a fine job!" She stuck a five dollar bill in the air before Stinky's nose.

"Gawsh!" Stinky Peterson said with an almost dazed astonishment. "That's mighty generous of you, Aunt Stinkel! But what in the heck are you givin' me money for?"

"That's your wages for babysitting," she explained. Sid clasped his hatted head.

"Boy howdy! There wouldn't be any more of that money, would there? Ma'am. What I mean to say is…." Sid explained before regaining his composure. "Is there anywhere you'd like to go while we babysit your child for… I dunno… another hour or so?"

"Well," the woman thought, thinking. "I'd love to run a few errands around town if you're willing."

"Great! We offer you our babysitting service! Ma'am!" Sid exclaimed shaking the woman's hand.

"I'll be back in three to four hours," the woman pledged. "Be good for cousin Stinky, Mel," the woman pledged.

"Hey, whatcha go and do that fer?" Stinky grumbled as his relative vanished. "I was keen to take this here five dollar bill down to the theatre and watch a matinee!"

"Nah, forget about that Stinky!" the boy uttered with exhilaration. "This is the big time!" He gestured his hand out to the broad expanse before him as he hugged Stinky near to him.

Sid had big plans. Soon there were three kids crawling around the front porch. He sat behind a little desk with a poster attached to it. It read, "Sid and Stink babysitting services."

"Thank you ma'am!" Sid said with a broad smile as Gloria's mother came to pick her son, Danny up. He handed her a sharp business card. "And here you are in case you require our services again!"

"Gawsh!" Stinky Peterson said as the remaining two kids were picked up from the porch by their respective parents. "You were right, Sid! We made another fifteen whole dollars!"

"Supply and demand, Stinky," Sid said, tucking his thumbs into his collar with pride. "Supply and demand!" the boy said with a certain, subtle suaveness that was all his. "Now come on! We have flyers to put up!"

Stinky and Sid jogged down the sidewalk to a bulletin board outside a small shopping called Bananamart. The two boys were happily stapling up an advertisement for their babysitting services when they were flanked on either side by Connie and Maria. Maria's bubblegum bubble made an angry pop and she bit it down against her teeth.

"Hey!" Maria said narrowing her eyes at the two boys. "Word is out that youse two boys are offering babysitting services! I just want you to know that we're the numero uno babysitters round these parts!"

"Yeah! What she says!" Connie muttered. "And those are the other ones!" A long line of angry preteen and teenagers glared down a Stinky and Sid.

"Gulp!" Sid dropped all his paper flyers. "Well, it was just a one-time thing for us! See you around ladies!" The two boys hustled down the street.

"Well, that sure wuz a bust," Stinky Peterson said, his long nose aimed down at the dust below the swing at the local park as he used the park swing for a comfortable chair. In two of the other four swings, a youthful couple was swinging backwards and forwards gently so that they might keep their pinkies hooked together as they swung, facing one another. But Sid and Stinky paid no attention to the kids with a crush. They had their own preoccupations to deal with.

"Sigh!" Sid heaved his chest expressively, then straightened himself upright again.

"Well, let's go back to your place, Stinky. I think I left some of my stuff there. Oh! Yeah! Including the stuff we got from the yard sale!"

With a smile returning to his lips, Sid swaggered down the sidewalk. But as he went, he turned his head to see an advertisement poster in a shop window. Something on the advertisement was to his liking.

"Hold on Stinky!" he hollered out. "They have a sale for drinks! Two for one!"

Sid entered the shop. Stinky waited outside, his hands in his pockets for his friend to return. As he waited, one of the kids from their school appeared. It was the curly-haired boy from the farm just outside Hillwood. (The same one who appeared in the scene where Olga's car breaks down with Helga's help.)

"Hey. Stinky," the boy said as his large family tumbled down off the back of a pickup truck. "I am surprised to see you. Is this your favorite shop, too?"

"Nah," Stinky shook his nose. "We were just amblin' by. How are you 'all doin' today?"

"It's a long day. We have a lot of work, bringing in a harvest. Say, are you interested in farm work?"

"Well, I reckon we could," Stinky muttered as he rubbed his chin. "Only lemme ask Stinky!"

"Ask me what?" the other boy said as he exited the shop with two soda bottles in hand.

Stinky and Sid did take up the offer. Soon, they rode down the road with the farming family, crammed into the second seat of a pickup truck. A small cow mooed in the back. Then the truck curled neatly down behind a corn row onto a dirt road.

"Gawsh!" Stinky said as they hopped out of the car. "A real live farm!"

"Come with me!" their helpful classmate explained. "I'll show you what to do!" The three kids walked towards a cultivated field. Stinky walked slightly hunched over, his hands in his jammed deep into his pockets. Sid swaggered in his boots. As the two best friends strolled along, they passed more of their classmate's family and their friends. Four kids were seated in a delapidated, rusted car, pretending to drive it.

"Hey! Move over! I wanna sit by Robert!" a vividly red-headed girl shrieked. With a grin, Robert yanked on the steering wheel of the car, pretending to drive it. Oblivious to the catfight around him, Robert did not notice when the red-haired girl pulled the braid of the blond-haired girl, then shoved her out of the car's front seat to take the shotgun seat for herself. "He's a hottie!" she sneered as she took the seat for herself.

The hot, sweltering sun beat overhead in the field. Wearing a funny-looking outfit of a white bonnet, thick gloves, and a frilly apron, Sid stood up from their field. Stinky stood up, too, holding a pitchfork and a straw hat.

"Gawsh!" Stinky Peterson exclaimed. "This sure is hard work! And it don't pay bountifully!"

"Nah, but at least we get some free carrots to take home," Sid said, holding up a bowl of orange carrots.

"Hm. You reckon there's some other line o' work some kid can do?" Stinky Peterson asked scratching his head. Off in the distance shrill beep and a blurp sounded out. Both boys twisted their heads around.

"Gawsh!" Stinky Peterson said as he and Sid both spied a tiny robot spinning down the dirt road on tiny wheels, much like a remote controlled car. "What da ya reckon is that, yonder?"

"Never mind that, Stinky! Isn't that Rex the Third?"

"Ya mean ol' Smythe-Higgins? I reckon you're right! Only what's he doin' way out here?" Curiosity drew them both to the spot where the blue-garbed boy stood, remote control in hand as the little robot spun around in the dust around him.

"Oh!" Rex Smythe Higgins the Third, a very snobbish, rich kid sneered with satisfaction as Stinky and Sid approached. "Are you come here to apply to be my minions? Here, write down your resumes on these scraps of paper and I'll consider it." He handed Sid and Stinky two blank pages of paper and two pencils. Stinky stared down at his page.

"Whatcha got?" Sid inquired after a long minute.

"My," Stinky said plainly. "How do you spell, 'resume'?"

"That's enough of that!" Rex declared. He snatched the two pieces of paper back and stuffed them into his shirt. "Now what I want you two boobs to do as MY minions is to test out the 317-Rocket-Robot I've assembled from kit. A very pricey item. Only I'm not sure I assembled all the pieces correctly. So I'd like you all to help me test it properly."

"Yeah? And what do we get out of it?" Sid asked.

"How about two Mr. Kandy Bars?" Rex said opening his fist to reveal two candies in it.

"That's chump change!" Sid sniffed. "Not worth our time!"

"How about five bars each?" Smite Higgins bartered.

"Deal!" Sid shook on it.

"Uh, Sid," Stinky Peterson commented as Rex Smythe-Higgins III walked arrogantly down the road, his robot toy rolling along in front of him. "Are you really sure we should up and hang out with a kid like that?"

"Oh, chill out, Stinky!" Sid declared with great confidence. "Whatever Rex wants can't be all that bad! Then we'll be rolling in candy!" But would it really be that simple?


	2. Chapter 2

Sid and Stinky had agreed to help Rex Smythe-Higgins the III test his new toy robot. But it was very likely that helping Rex with this goal would not be fun for either of the two boys from P.S. 118. It was true that Rex was not the meanest of kids. But he wasn't entirely nice, either. Sometimes he was an outright bully for the sake of competition. Today he was simply being obnoxious.

"I'm the only kid in all of Hillwood with a 317 Rocket-Robot, proprietary trademark of Sneeoosh Toys! That makes me even more exemplary!" the child sneered in a snooty way. He speed the robot along the dirt track with its tiny wheels until it came to a patch of loose dirt, then fell over. Rex jammed the controls, then growled.

"Minions! Fix this!" Rex scowled at Stinky and Sid.

"Gaswh. There's some dirt and tiny pebbles caught in the wheels. That's all," Stinky observed. He brushed the offending dirt from away from the plastic tires and set it down on the flat surface of the road again.

"Good job, minion," Rex snapped. "Now let's test the 317 Rocket-Robot's flight capabilities!" Rex pressed a round, red button on the toy's controller. A hinged door opened up to reveal a joystick. Rex took hold of this new control. Speedily, the robot transformed into a helicopter robot with miniature thrusters and flew upwards. It spun out of control in a dizzying spiral. Rex struggled with the controls as the robot flew past drying laundry and passed through both doors in the chicken coop of the nearby farm. Rex's toy startled all the chickens out of their coop, then climbed up towards the sun. As Rex dialed some buttons, the rocket thrusters cut out, then the untransformed robot toy fell back toward earth at a slanted trajectory. It dropped harmlessly into the hay loft of the barn.

"Hm, the rocket fuel reserves must have run out," Rex muttered to himself. Then he snapped a finger in the direction of the barn. "Minions! Go and get it for me!" With a shrug, Stinky and Sid went to borrow a ladder from the farm's owners to retrieve the costly toy. Silent and staring, they observed Rex's almost manic glee as he took the toy back.

"Ah-ha! One more significant test remains! Let's go down to the nearest surfaced aquiferial tributary! Come minions! Follow me!" Completely ignoring Rex's derogatory terminology, Sid and Stinky followed Rex down to a babbling brook. Stinky admired it.

"Wow. This sure is a keen little place to fish! I reckon I'll come back here with my pa's ol' fishing pole when I have the chance to!"

Sid looked into the water. A number of curious frogs rose to the surface to stare at him and Sydney, as the frog pet peeked out from beneath Sid's hat. Rex set the rocket robot down on the banks of the brook. Then he pressed a blue button on the control box.

"The 317-Rocket Robot is also supposed to have submersion capabilities! This stream will prove an adequate test site for these claims!" Rex drove the costly toy, now sporting flippers, into the water. It sank with a blurble.

"Gawsh. Are you really sure that's a good idea?" Stinky stared uneasily at the bubbles on the water's surface.

"Of course!" Rex declared with prideful certainty. "Its integral components are water proofed! If it does not hold up to standard, such a toy is beneath me!" Rex declared. He twisted the controls around.

"Hm, that's odd," he frowned. "The robot is not coming up. Well, no matter! YOU boys stay here and retrieve it for me! Bring it over to me at my house when you retrieve it!" Rex lobbed the controller at the taller Stinky Peterson and walked away.

"Gosh," Stinky observed as Rex disappeared.

"I knew working for Rex was a bad idea!" Sid moaned.

"Now wait a cluckin' minute!" Stinky glared. "This whole thing was your dang idea!" he scolded his friend.

"Oh yeah!" Sid said upon remembering.

Stinky might have rolled his eyes. But instead he calmed down to say, "Well, let's get the dang thing out of the river somehow!"

To do so took effort. First, Stinky and Sid sat crammed, back to back, in an old wooden barrel in lieu of a boat as Stinky used an old fishing pole to try to "fish" for the toy. Then, abandoning that plan, Sid dove into the stream while Stinky waited on the side of the river, holding his dry shirt for him. Dripping wet, Sid held up the toy triumphantly.

"Got it!" Sid beamed. But as a sloggy Sid set it on the riverbank, water gushed out of the device. Sid stood back as Stinky Peterson pressed a button on the controller. The toy crackled, then exploded in a puff of smoke.

"Ack!" Sid clutched his head with panic and misery. "You broke it! What'll we tell Rex?"

"Well, hm, I'm guessing desperate times call for desperate measures!" Stinky decided with a habit of perfect calm.

"You mean?" Sid clenched his teeth together. Stinky nodded.

"Yup! I think it's time we consulted an expert!"

That very afternoon, Stinky and Sid strolled down a sidewalk in the business district of Hillwood. They had made their way to a street which threaded between the very tallest skyscrapers in the city. Both now wore fancy suits, complete with ties and immaculately polished shoes. Swinging their arms wide, they stopped beside a very well-dressed business man carrying a briefcase, wearing shades, and surrounded by other business men and women.

"Excuse me, Sir!" Stinky asked. The man at the center of the group turned his head to look down on the two boys only half his height.

"What do you want, kid?" he asked Stinky, halting conversation and his exit into a yellow city taxi-cab.

"Well, sir, it's like this!" Stinky explained in a concise way. "We're junior business men! And we've gone an bungled up one of the projects our employer gave us, and now our boss will be fit to be mad about it! So what do we do now?"

"Hm," the man said, seriously thinking. "Well, if that project is nothing but scrap the best thing you can do if present him with another project so good, he'll forget about the last one!"

"That is some keen advice, Sir!" Stinky grinned. "I sure thank you for the wisdom!"

"You're welcome, kid!" the stranger tossed back lightly before stepping into his taxicab to be on his way.

"Well, you heard him!" Stinky declared as the taxi cab drove away. But Sid grimaced.

"But where will be get another project as awesome as all that? Oh, wait!" Sid snapped his fingers together. "I know where we can get another robot! There's a rumor about some genius kid who does things with electronics. Let's go ask him!"

Sid and Stinky made their way across the city again, this time stopping in a school district very distant from their own. There, an old shed with a crooked door sat at the edge of a weedy backyard. Sid approached a door outlined with the glow of bright lights from inside. He cracked the door open and stuck his nose inside the door.

"Hello?" Sid called into the shed's interior. "Anybody there?"

"Come in or go away!" a voice from inside the shed snapped. "I'm very busy! Where are my pomegranate juice and Fizzsnapps Crackers? If you want me to commission a work for you, I'll have my due!"

"Here you go!" Sid said opening up a lunchbox and setting a large lunchbox in front of the boy. "I even included a delicious turkey sandwich on wheat bread for you. Yum, yum!" Sid smiled a fake grin. The genius inventor, wearing an odd metal hat made from antennae, yet pleasantly reminiscent of a Viking's, stuffed the sandwich in his mouth.

"Very well. What do you want?" Sid held up a diagram drawn in blue crayon.

"A robot! See! Fancy and one of the best!" The local guru of electronics took the "blueprint" from Sid's hand to study it.

Sid and Stinky's reliance on this new acquaintance of theirs was the reason why, on a morning several days after, the two of them stood outside the front door where both Smythe-Higgins Senior and Smythe-Higgins III lived. The doorbell rang thrice, then the boy in the pressed blue-linen suit peered out the front door while wiping his lips with a napkin.

"Ah! It's you old fellows!" Rex stared with disinterest. "Did you ever retrieve the 317 Rocket-Robot like you were supposed to?"

"Well… we did," Stinky began awkwardly. "But then we went and found ya something a whole lot better! Let me present to you!" Stinky said with a small bow. "The Turbo-Spinnerator-Whoopla-Hoola-Spring-Sprinting Robot Toy, 2000!" Sid whipped a sheet off of a large box. A robot as tall as Sid's waist lurched slowly forward on its two, wedge-like wheels. Rex started. And as as hoped for, he forgot to be angry about losing his last robot.

"Wow! That is better!" Rex beamed. "Not give me the controls to that brilliant little chrome-plated thing, and we'll give it a spin around the world!" Rex played happily with the controls to the new toy for several long minutes.

"Well! I say! You've redeemed yourself, minions!"

"Well, there is one catch," Stinky admitted. "The cost to construct it weren't cheap! We had to take a loan out with Wolfgang in your name to pay for it!" A glum Stinky handed a sheet of paper over to Rex. But Stinky did not need to be so cautious. Rex was peculiarly indifferent. He glanced the charge sheet over, then tossed it over his shoulder with carefree disdain.

"Oh, well! It's three times more expensive than my old 317 Rocket-Robot, but that makes it three times more worth having! It's a job well done! Now, with this robot, I can enter this year's robotics tournament at the local community college. Care to come with, old chaps?"

"Huh?!" was the reaction of both Stinky and Sid. "Go where?"

"To what?" Sid echoed the daze of his friend. It was amazing the places their associating with Rex was dragging them to.

Soon enough, Sid and Stinky got off a bus alongside Rex as evening fell. They entered a tall building illuminated with near as many lights as a hockey rink. People of all ages, but mostly young adults, all clustered alongside the walls of a plywood barricade. Tiny homemade robots, like one made from a soup kettle and another from a can, battled one another or did tricks within the plywood box. One robot in particular seemed to be doing the most damage. It was crushing all of the other robots by driving over them, battering them with a spiked ram, or smacking them with a tiny but outsized mallet.

"Heeheeheee!" Phoebe unpleasantly laughed from behind her rimmed glasses, a box controller in her hand. She spoke in an almost villainous way.

"Try, try, try as much as you can to get away! The Hydro Lapagos Grander is invincible!"

"Yeah, go Phoebe!" Helga called from the sidelines near by where Sid and Stinky were standing. Then she took the time to notice them.

"Oh, hey boys. You here to watch Phoebes and the robot club she's part of kick tail?"

"No. And since when is she doin' that?" Stinky complained. Helga leveled a stare at the boy. Need she go into a long explanation?

"Why are all the little robot smashin' the other little robots? After we darn went through so much work and trouble buildin' them?"

"Oh, that," Helga tapped her chin. "Creation, destruction, and a little love on the side! That's humanity in a nutshell for you! I suppose building the robots and smashin' 'em up are equally as enjoyable. At least for Phoebes!" Helga gestured towards where Phoebe was cackling.

"And she seemed to be a mild, kind-hearted spirit, too!" Stinky observed as Phoebe's robot finished off the tiny car she was up against.

"Makes you rethink, doesn't it?" Sid lamented unblinkingly. But they were not left to themselves.

"Okay, minions! We're up next!" Rex Smythe-Higgins III declared holding up a form and a badge to go with it. "I've entered the The Turbo-Spinnerator-Whoopla-Hoola-Spring-Sprinting Robot Toy, 2000 into this year's tournament! We'll be challenging Miss Heyerdahl and her friends over there," Rex gestured a bunch of gangly twenty-somethings hanging around Phoebe, "for the title of best robot!"

"Aw! You'll scratch the paint!" Sid grimaced. "And we paid extra for the good kind, too!"

But Rex did not pause to respond to Sid's lamentations. Instead, he pushed his new robot through the appointed gates. Then, hunched forward on his toes and back curled slightly in anxiety, he hovered over his controls to steer the robot. It spun round and round like a hoola-hoop, then hopped up and down on bed coils to spring and wobble around Phoebe's robot. She swung the hammer of her craft wildly, endeavoring to catch the toy that was a fly to her, but failed. Then Phoebe drove forward. Her wheels churned and with a squeal, her tank-like robot shot forward as if the drive over or impale the one owned by Rex. But the newly constructed robot veered out of the way and Phoebe's robot got stuck by its spike in the wall of the plywood.

"Grr!" Phoebe growled as she maneuvered her toy destruction machine into reverse. Then Rex flipped a switch. His robot whirled about like a top and like an off-balanced washer, spun to the side to collide with the one Phoebe was controlling.

"Aw! Both are wrecked!" the event's referee decided, holding up both crumpled toys. "But you did demonstrate that both are good designs! Well done!"

"Well, it ain't like we designed it ourselves!" Stinky complained. "But the fella we bought it from sure will be pleased if we tell him!"

"Hm, well an honorable mention is less than nothing!" Rex decided as he took back his damaged toy from the Referee. He shook Phoebe's hand.

"Hm, I wonder if the inventor of this toy might be able to make me a helpful robot that will round up tennis balls for me," Rex mused to himself as Stinky and Sid jogged to catch up. "Oh! And for you, chaps! Here, your candy bars!" Rex Smythe-Higgins III gave a generous helping of candy bars to both Stinky and Sid.

"Hm," Stinky observed to his friend as both he and Sid waited for the next bus home. Sid munched on one of his candy bars. "You figure we learned something from all of this?"

"Like… this candy doesn't taste near enough good enough?" Sid questioned.

"Nah! Nothing like that!" Stinky complained. "Something far more profound!"

"Nah! Oh, chill, Stinky! Don't overthink it! After all, when we grow up, we might find someone else to work for other than Rex!"

"Now wouldn't that be nice!" Stinky voiced out loud as their bus started up and wend its way down the streets of a city where grownups still walked and and worked the streets as neon lights proliferated like stars glued to the gritty surface of earth. The end.


End file.
